Ceremony

Innovative Leisure; 2011

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Ernest Gonzales, aka Mexicans With Guns, seems disinterested in things like nuance and pacing. Often seen outfitted in a luchador mask, Gonzales clearly has a flair for the theatrical, and his debut LP, Ceremony, strives for the cinematic. Rooted in drum'n'bass while touching on everything from 8-bit to dubstep to house, Gonzales aims to assault your senses with all the subtlety of a frying pan smack.

But for all its range, Ceremony suffers from being brazenly repetitive, relying on flash instead of substance and betraying a lack of restraint. Tracks are build around deep bass, throbbing swaths of electronics, and errant sound effects, all of which are usually contrasted by a mercurial element, like say, a brief, semi-melodious synth line. The resulting tracks sadly feel too truncated for the dancefloor and too monotonous for headphones.

Gonzales does have a solid feel for the role of percussion in his futuristic assemblages, such as the shakers and claps on the alien, evil "Jaguar" or the riotous cowbells on "Fields". And despite a lack of variance, Gonzales proves to be an interesting mimic at times, offering a slightly less-heady approximation of a Zomby track ("Fields"), and channeling a menace-dripping Massive Attack ("Restart"). The latter gets a boost from vocalist Sasha Perera, who finds herself in the esteemed company rapper Freddie Gibbs and folk-futurist Helado Negro, proving, if nothing else, that at least the guy has taste.

But Gonzales' mishandling of those guest spots and the record's frankly obnoxious second half makes for a burdening listen. Gibbs tries to craft some semblance of a song out of the wonky bluster of "Highway to Hell", but the track is a non-starter. Everyone else is simply drowned out by the racket, making Gonzales' "look at me" aesthetic feel even more masturbatory. (For some reason, only rapper Nocando gets a pass for his appearance on "Got Me Fucked Up", a song so hilariously awful it demands to be mentioned here.) Despite the thoughtfulness bestowed upon the Helado Negro-assisted closing track, it's of little consequence-- the record's end is reward enough. So, lesson learned: No matter how deep the bass is, it can't mask how shallow most of the ideas are.